Details
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Type:
Improvement
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Status:
Open
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Priority:
Minor
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Resolution: Unresolved
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Labels:None
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Number of attachments :
Description
I recently ran into a Maven problem in which standard artifacts that were hosted on Central could not be downloaded. I eventually traced the problem to the use of a mirror. Our team had been using a local installation of Nexus to mirror Central, as described here:
http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-mirror-settings.html
The problem was that the mirror was down. Now, I knew the mirror was down, but I assumed (wrongly) that Maven would try to route around the problem by skipping the downed mirror and obtaining the artifact directly from Central. (It is, after all, only a mirror, not the actual repository.) Instead, if a mirror is down, Maven simply aborts, saying it cannot download the file. This led me to the mistaken conclusion that Central itself was down.
It would be nice if this problem could be fixed so that a downed mirror doesn't cause Maven to fail, but that might take a lot of work, so in the meantime I'd be happy if the problem were simply documented. Unfortunately, the "Guide to Mirror Settings" in the link above talks a lot about how to declare a mirror, but it doesn't say what Maven does if it can't connect to a mirror. It should be amended to include this information.
Unless I am mistaken, using a mirror is the way to do it if you want to use an archetype of anything not in central.
Thats the reason I started using my companies internal repository as a mirror of central, which works perfectly, except of course when I am not connected to the VPN meaning the mirror is effectively offline. The nothing works. (Our projects are also set up so that they replace central with our repo)
I am surprised this is not fixed yet.